Hopeful Solidarities is a collaboration between three writer-teacher-activists and community organisations we are part of in Brighton and Hove. In times of multiple intersecting crises, ranging from struggles for daily survival in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, the spiralling cost of living, climate change and the racist legacies of European colonialism, we explore and work alongside islands of hope. We engage with members of our community organisations, listening to people’s reflections on their own stories in the light of the present moment, and seek to build on emergent solidarities through everyday, practical and creative work including writing, film, photography, food and music.
SHIFT
SHIFT is a digital platform that undertakes research and conversations with UK based learning disabled and neurodivergent artists about where and how their works are placed, showcased, and written about. The accessible films showcase eight artists and their practices, alongside important conversations with these artists, hearing their opinions.
https://www.shift.jenniferlaurengallery.com/
Women’s Community Matters
Women’s Community Matters want to play our part in creating a world where the consequences of gender inequality and patriarchy, and their impact on women and their families, are consigned to history. We are a Charitable Incorporated Organisation registered with the Charity Commission with our primary focus on women-centred working.
The New School of the Anthropocene
The New School of the Anthropocene is a radical and affordable experiment in interdisciplinary higher education, which confronts biopolitical crisis in collaboration with October Gallery in London. We are an ensemble of experienced academics and practitioners who wish to restore the critical risk and creative desire to arts education.
POWER
POWER declares that a climate emergency has arrived on every street. As artists and filmmakers working with our home community we are taking a vital leap of the imagination – giving ourselves the power of government to print money and enact a Green New Deal now setting up a solar POWER STATION across the rooftops of Waltham Forest, London.
The Farmer’s Yarns
Founded by Maria Benjamin in 2021, The Farmer’s Yarns is a Cumbrian wool event that showcases farm2yarn micro businesses. Wool is a fantastic, natural, biodegradable resource that is currently undervalued. The Farmer’s Yarns highlights and celebrates the positive impact those making the most of this fibre can have. It brings together people open to knowledge sharing and collaborative working.
Sounding The Voices
Sounding The Voices scores collaborative exchanges between six women with lived experience of challenging histories. How might we ‘sound’ the space between our pasts and presents, personally and collectively, to shape futures resisting complacency and despair, and in doing so, offering a ‘being, otherwise’?
Breaks & Joins
Breaks & Joins is a collective who want to make the connections between practical acts of repair, and the repair of our communities and ourselves. We have a repair café led by ‘Mend it with Mo’, Community conversations training with Raj Bhari, and arts workshops with Sue Mayo, Amanda Mascarenhas & Chuck Blue Lowry.
The School of Abolition
The School of Abolition is a year-long action research project that uses contemporary art and activism to challenge Scotland’s prison industrial complex and the ways in which we respond to harm and crime without resorting to further policing or imprisonment.
Warp & Weft
Warp & Weft explores consciousness, and ways of understanding experiences of distress as they occur within our social and systemic contexts. It looks at what gets called ‘mental health’, also at trauma in a broad sense, and considers approaches to foster liberatory personal and collective transformation.
The Class Work Project
The Class Work Project is a workers co-operative focusing on class stigma and marginalisation. We centre the knowledge and experiences of poor and working-class people by publishing our quarterly journal Lumpen, and delivering workshops on class. We also work to create opportunities for the redistribution of resources within social movements.
Becoming British
British is a performative exhibition that seeks to interrogate processes of ‘Becoming’ and help audiences explore their own experience of nationality. Centering the voices of migrant artists and community members it will educate, entertain and inform – building
towards a documentary performance piece to be toured in 2023.
Siyakhuluma Wetalk Podcast
We Talk is a platform that makes asylum seekers and community voices heard. On the podcast we really do welcome everyone.
Young Identity
Young Identity (YI) is a Manchester-based literature and performance arts charity creating opportunities for young people at risk of excellence.
We believe the arts transform lives, our mission is to develop literacy, critical thinking and creative skills in young people through the dynamism of our innovative programme, we nurture the talent of tomorrow.
Drawing as Stimming
Drawing as stimming looks to create a time where stimming can happen, through drawing and in response to artworks in the gallery setting, or online in response to art collections. Drawing as Stimming seeks to explore how drawing and mark making can support non-verbal interpretation of artworks, whilst also enabling safe spaces to stimm.
Lancaster Black History Group
Lancaster Black History is a new grassroots community group of local residents working to fight racism through education. The group aims to make Lancaster a leading example of how Black British histories can be included in all aspects of education, arts, and society.
Don’t Google It
Don’t Google It is a digital channel which commissions all kinds of people to make episodes about the world we live in. Launching in February 2021, Don’t Google It will release a new series every two months.
Black History School
Black History School is an online curriculum for children and families. This UK centred programme will provide families the opportunity to learn about Black history through songs, sketches, cooking and mindfulness, providing activities that encourage a supportive community network through shared heritage and creative learning.
9ft in Common
An investigation about ownership, access, disruption and place. 9ft in Common uncovers the complexities and shares the possibilities of an infrastructure of urban alleyways, Belfast’s wild and liminal spaces. 9ft in Common is developed across the disciplines of art and architecture by Amberlea Neely (Starling Start) and Aisling Rusk (Studio Idir).
The Human Nature Project
Within Human Nature lies the ability to create, connect and adapt to change.
The Human Nature Project’s ambition is to strengthen our emotional connection with the more-than-human world, while at the same time strengthening our sense of connection to each other, and to our own individual mental health and resilience.